(Updated January 2006) A reader recently enquired about the origin
of The Elephant and Castle, the name of a square in London. This falls outside
the normal scope of Words to the Wise but it raises several interesting topics so
I thought I'd talk about it here.

The square takes its name from The
Elephant and Castle pub which stands on one of its corners. The pub has a splendid
old inn-sign showing an elephant equipped for battle with a castellated howdah on
its back, rather like a castle from an old chess-set. Speaking of which, have you ever
wondered why, in chess, a castle is often called a rook? Well, first, chess
originated in India and came to us via Persia and the Middle East. The game was
essentially a battle in miniature with the castle representing a war-elephant. The next
part of the story involves, incredibly, a gigantic legendary bird called the rukh
or simurgh. The illustrators of medieval Persian manuscripts produced magnificent
works of art but they were unfamiliar with perspective. Thus, in order to show the vast
size of the rukh within the scope of a miniature illustration, they routinely
showed the bird holding an elephant between its claws. As chess-playing spread westwards,
people who had never seen an elephant recognized one of the pieces as the animal held by
the rukh. So they called it a rook.

So, back to the pub. It is quite possible
that its name comes, for whatever reason, from this image of a war-elephant. There is
another suggestion, however, that it is a corruption of the Spanish phrase La Infanta
de Castilia. This is unlikely, however, because the infanta always
cited is Eleanor of Castile. However, she was never an infanta, which
was the term applied to the king's first daughter in Spain and Portugal. There has
been an inn of the name Elephant and Castle on the same site since
about 1760, and prior to that it was a smithy with the same name, or so
Michael Quinion tells us. The smithy was apparently associated with
the Cutlers' Company, a guild for makers of knives, scissors, and other
cutting implements. Quinion says that the smithy's connection to
elephants was in their use of ivory for knife handles.

If the pub name had been a
corruption of La Infanta de Castilia, it would have been the result
of a process called folk etymology, where foreign or unusual words
are changed into something more familiar, even though the changed form may
not make much sense.

English inns and public houses have a wealth
of weird and wonderful names, often with surprising etymologies. One such is The Pig
and Whistle. This fairly common inn name is a corruption of peg of wassail,
where peg means a large wooden bowl and wassail is beer. Another of my
favorites is The Goat and Compasses, said to be a corruption of God
encompasses all. My investigations failed abjectly to find satisfactory etymologies
for The Queen's Head and Artichoke (in Euston) and The Frog and Nightgown
(The Old Kent Road) but their names are far too much fun not to mention.

Your
Etymological Queries Answered

From Tim Shannon:

I'd like to know the origin of the word deadline.
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word refers to a line
drawn around a prison over which crossing prisoners could be shot. If only I could
do that with all the contributors to my company newsletter who miss the submission
deadline!

Merriam-Webster does indeed claim that the
word is related to prisoners, and they cite 1864 as the year of the word's first
appearance in the written record. This jibes with what Mike and I recall about the
word originating during the American Civil War: prisoners in that war were seldom held in
purpose-built jails. More often, they were herded at gunpoint inside a makeshift boundary.
The boundary had two lines, and a prisoner who stepped outside the inner boundary was
ordered back, but one who over-stepped the outer boundary was shot. Thus, it was called
the deadline.

From Charmlin Leslie Howard:

I was told by a very learned and
knowledgable friend of mine that the letter "J" didn't appear in ANY alphabet
until the 15th century - what can you tell me about that?

In Roman times the letter i
performed a dual role as both a vowel and a consonant, much as the letter y does
in English. Sometime in the middle ages, possibly in 12th century German "black
letter" script, possibly in Celtic "uncial", j emerged as a
variant form of the letter i. The letter j as a consonant was first
differentiated from the vowel i in Spain around 1485. It is a matter of
scholarly debate how its form arose. One theory is that, in medieval illuminated
manuscripts, a decorative initial i was often given a curl to the left at its
base and as words are more likely to start with a consonant this became the letter j.
It was not fully accepted as a proper English letter until the 19th century.

From McCormick, Dunn & Black:

I adore your site, and I share your passion
for word origins. I'm looking for the origin of the term boilerplate.
Here is my silly thought as to the origin: I seem to recall hearing that the term
came about when steam boilers were more common and posed a serious health risk to those
working with them. I seem to further recall hearing that the boiler manufacturers
put their warnings in small print on the sides of the boilers, and they thereby avoided
liability for their unsafe products. Any thoughts?

First, while I suspected that McCormick,
Dunn & Black was a law firm, the form of your question has all but confirmed that, as
has the word you have asked about. Boilerplate language is a term most
common these days in the legal profession. Interestingly, the term arose from the
newspaper business. Columns and other pieces that were syndicated were sent
out to subscribing newspapers in the form of a mat (i.e. a matrix). Once received,
boiling lead was poured into this mat to create the plate used to print the piece, hence
the name boilerplate. As the article printed on a boilerplate
could not be altered, the term came to be used by attorneys to refer to the portions of a
contract which did not change through repeated uses in different applications, and finally
to language in general which did not change in any document that was used repeatedly for
different occasions.

I can see where the term boilerplate
might conjure images of a boiler, but in this case warnings and liability have nothing to
do with the etymology of the word.

From Renato L. Galeazzi:

Where does enclave come from? I
read clavus (nail) or clavis (key) as the origin? What's right?

An enclave is a country (or part of a
country) which is completely surrounded by another. One might even say that it is locked
up within its neighbor and it is this image which the word enclave implies.
There was a Latin word inclavare, from in (in) + clavis (key) +
-are (verb suffix), which meant "to lock up". This passed into Old
French as enclaver and from this verb the French noun enclave was
created by a process called back-formation. Although the word enclaved existed in
Middle English (1435), enclave itself did not enter English until 1868.

From Sarah and Warren:

We have been trying to locate the origins of
the usage of the word step in relation to step- parenting. There
are, in literature, mostly only negative references to stepparents and we are most curious
to find what has created such a stigma around the word. Strangely there is little to
be found on the subject in general, and we would be very grateful if you could shed some
light on this taboo subject.

I think you're going to be surprised by the
etymology of stepmother/stepfather. The prefix step- used in this
sense is Middle English, derived from Old English steop-. The Old English
form is cognate with similar forms in many of the Germanic languages: Old Frisian stiap-,
Middle Low German stef-, Middle and modern Dutch stief-, Old High German
stiof-, Old Icelandic stjup-, Swedish styv-, Old Danish stiup-,
and Norwegian ste-. The Old English form comes from steopcild
("stepchild"), which meant "orphan". The steop- prefix
comes from Old English astiepan/bestiepan "bereave" (with
cognates in Old High German arstiufen/bestiufen). The sense is that an
orphan is bereaving his lost parent(s). Before 800, stepfather/stepmother
meant "one who becomes a father/mother to an orphan", and stepson/stepdaughter
meant "an orphan who becomes a son/daughter by the remarriage of a parent".

As for any stigma associated with stepparents,
especially stepmothers, I'll leave that to the anthropologists and sociologists
to explain.

From Karl Graham:

Hi, I found your site interesting and
"in fine fettle". I would like very much to understand the
origin of this word. I understand that it is used to refer to one's condition.
I also believe that it was used in NW England, but does it come from "feel ill"
or "felt well" or something completely different? I'd appreciate any help
you could offer.

One meaning of fettle is shape so
to be in fine fettle is to be "in good shape". It is a dialect word,
coming from Lancashire, in England. Its origins can be traced to the Middle English (about
1380) fettelen, to arrange or make ready. Even more anciently (before 900) it may
be related to the Old English fetel, a belt or girdle. If this is correct then it
is comes from an Old Germanic root meaning "to hold" and is also cognate with fetter.

...our soapbox where we vent our
spleen regarding abuses of the English language.

Singular and plural (mainly for
Brits)

You would think that most people would have
grasped the principle of number quite early in life, but no! And I'm not talking about
Cantorian transfinite mathematics, here. I'm not even talking about advanced counting.
Just as long as you can handle the concepts of "one" and "many"
without having to lie down with an ice-pack in a darkened room you should be fine.

Now I'm going to type this slowly because I
know some of you can't read fast. Singular nouns take singular verbs and plural nouns take
plural verbs. This is called "agreement of number".

Why is it that so many British journalists
and broadcasters can't get this right? I frequently hear sentences like "The English
team are playing at home". This is grammatically indefensible as "team" is
a singular noun. (For those at the back of the class who still haven't got it, it should
be "is playing".) I know that a team is made up of several players but that does
not affect the syntax. It is the singular word "team" which is the subject of
the sentence; the plural word "players" occurs not at all. If you still think it
correct to say "the team are playing" then would you also think it correct to
say "the team are composed of eleven men"?